Observatorio Económico Latinoamericano OBELA - Jomo Kwame Sundaramhttp://obela.org/autores/jomo-kwame-sundaram
esRethinking Free Trade Agreements in Uncertain Timeshttp://obela.org/nota/rethinking-free-trade-agreements-in-uncertain-times
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Autor:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/autores/jomo-kwame-sundaram">Jomo Kwame Sundaram</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-fuente2 field-type-link-field field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Fuente:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/01/rethinking-free-trade-agreements-uncertain-times/" target="_blank">http://www.ipsnews.net/2019/01/rethinking-free-trade-agreements-uncertain-times/</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Cuerpo:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, Jan 8 2019 (IPS) - After US President Donald Trump withdrew from Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), involving twelve countries on the Pacific rim, on his first day in office, Japan, Australia and their closest allies proposed and promoted the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) to draw the US back into the region to counter China’s fast-growing power and influence.</p><p>Geostrategic deal to re-engage US in East Asia</p><p>The modest projected gains claimed by the most popularly used trade models are based on dubious methodologies. President Obama had explicitly promoted the TPP for geostrategic reasons even though both US government cost-benefit analyses found very modest gains from the free trade agreement (FTA).</p><p>With miniscule real trade gains from the original TPP, US withdrawal has made benefits from the regional agreement even more trivial. Without the US market, the TPP’s supposed benefits largely disappeared with the CPTPP. Hence, while its proponents hope the CPTPP will re-engage the US as hegemon in the region, TPP advocates have become even more desperate for US participation.</p><p>The Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), the main TPP and CPTPP advocate, claimed most (85%) growth gains from non-trade measures (NTMs), not trade liberalization per se. Such claims were largely refuted by the 2016 US International Trade Council (ITC) report.</p><p>The World Bank used PIIE consultants to make even more exaggerated claims of TPP gains in early 2017, ignoring most costs and risks. CPTPP advocates have made even more extravagant claims about supposed benefits since.</p><p>To make matters worse, besides the meagre trade gains, enhanced intellectual property rights (IPRs) and investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions will fetter developing countries’ ‘catch-up’ economic prospects. Besides raising costs, e.g., for buying medicines and technologies, strengthened IPRs will further limit technology transfer.</p><p>ISDS will enable foreign investors to sue CPTPP governments, not in national courts, but rather, private arbitration tribunals. Besides undermining national judicial sovereignty, small country governments with limited legal resources will be disadvantaged. Ironically, Trump’s US Trade Representative now rejects reciprocal ISDS for undermining US sovereignty!</p><p>From the frying pan into the fire</p><p>Informed analysts know that CPTPP losses, costs and risks are much greater than for the TPP while gains will be more trivial despite cheerleaders’ claims to the contrary. More worryingly, very few developing country negotiators have actually scrutinized and understood the likely implications of the 6350 page TPP agreement.</p><p>Some minor changes were made to the TPP agreement for the CPTPP. Several onerous provisions were amended, and some others suspended, leaving most unchanged. Only a few CPTPP governments secured ‘side letters’, exempting them from some specific clauses.</p><p>Thus, most onerous TPP provisions remain. The CPTPP has committed Malaysia to further trade liberalization, accelerating deindustrialization, besides constraining the growth of modern services, development finance and ‘policy space’.</p><p>With the economic slowdown of the last decade wrongly attributed to the end of trade expansion since 2009, and the more recent ‘populist-nationalist’ reversal of trade liberalization, wishful thinking has emerged that the CPTPP will somehow magically enhance economic growth and progress.</p><p>Developmental, multilateral FTA needed</p><p>Increased market access for exports typically requires trade liberalization by others, but trade liberalization also undermines food and industrial production. Recognizing such problems after the end of the Uruguay Round of trade talks led to the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in the mid-1990s, most developing country members have since sought to ensure that WTO rules are more development-friendly, launching a Development Round at its Doha biennial ministerial conference in late 2001.</p><p>As trade liberalization advocate Jagdish Bhagwati has argued, bilateral and plurilateral FTAs have long undermined WTO-led trade multilateralism. At the national level, developing country governments should amend legislation and policy in line with their needs, especially for development, not at the behest of corporate lobbyists or geostrategic priorities.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Palabras clave:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/categoria/palabras-clave/tpp">TPP</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/palabras-clave/acuerdos-multilaterales">acuerdos multilaterales</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/categoria/palabras-clave/libre-mercado">libre mercado</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categoria field-type-list-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tema de investigación:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Integración y comercio</div></div></div>Thu, 10 Jan 2019 23:25:58 +0000anegrete2400 at http://obela.orgBig Business Capturing UN SDG Agenda?http://obela.org/nota/big-business-capturing-un-sdga-agenda
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Autor:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/autores/jomo-kwame-sundaram">Jomo Kwame Sundaram</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/autores/anis-chowdhury">Anis Chowdhury</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-fuente2 field-type-link-field field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Fuente:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/big-business-capturing-un-sdg-agenda/" target="_blank">http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/big-business-capturing-un-sdg-agenda/</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Cuerpo:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p align="justify">KUALA LUMPUR &amp; SYDNEY, Dec 11 2018 (IPS) - Over the last two decades since the Global Compact, the United Nations has increasingly embraced the corporate sector, most recently to raise finance needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), i.e., for Agenda 2030. But growing big business influence has also compromised analyses, recommendations, policies and programme implementation, undermining the SDGs.</p><p align="justify"> </p><p align="justify">Changing financing arrangements</p><p align="justify">Inadequate funding of the UN and its mandates by member States has required this search for additional finance, initially with philanthropy and ‘corporate social responsibility’ efforts by private business, but increasingly, by viewing profit-seeking investments as somehow contributing to achieve the SDGs.</p><p align="justify">While the global economy grew 47 fold from $1.35 trillion in 1960 to $63 trillion in 2010, the UN organization’s regular core budget fell to 0.0037 per cent of global income. Meanwhile, ‘core’ un-earmarked resources fell from nearly half of all UN financial resources in 1997 to less than a quarter today. A recent UN Secretary-General’s report estimated that over 90 per cent of all UN development system activities in 2015 were funded with non-core, earmarked project resources.</p><p align="justify">An earlier report found total non-core resources for UN-related activities increased 182 per cent in real terms between 1999 and 2014, mostly going through a growing number of UN ‘vertical’ trust funds, beyond Member States’ control, while core resources increased only 14 per cent.</p><p align="justify">Such ‘siloed’ trust funds – with funding rising three-fold over the last decade – enable both donor governments and corporate interests to determine UN funding, bypassing established decision-making processes. Thus, UN development financing increasingly serves donor priorities.</p><p align="justify"> </p><p align="justify">New development finance discourse</p><p align="justify">Influential quarters claim that in order to achieve Agenda 2030, financing needs have to rise “from billions to trillions” of US dollars, and that this can only be done by engaging the corporate sector.</p><p align="justify">According to a 2015 World Bank report, while the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) needed billions in official development assistance, the SDGs require trillions in investments.</p><p align="justify">Although most development spending involves national public resources, most Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) governments opposed international tax cooperation at the 2015 Addis Ababa third UN Financing for Development conference.</p><p align="justify">Thus, instead of helping boost national revenue enhancing capacities and capabilities, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) claimed that private capital had “the potential for scaling up to achieve the demands of the Sustainable Development Goals”.</p><p align="justify"> </p><p align="justify">Corporate funding for sustainable development?</p><p align="justify">The three major multilateral agreements of 2015 – the AAAA, the Agenda 2030 for SDGs and the Paris climate agreement – were all premised on private financing while the Agenda 2030 Reflection Group stressed the need to mobilize funding from private business, finance and investment.</p><p align="justify">Multi-stakeholder partnerships have long been advocated by many OECD governments, UN agencies and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. This envisaged big business working with governments in public-private partnerships (PPPs), blended finance and various other novel financing arrangements.</p><p align="justify">A 2015 UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report emphasized the need to “access private capital at scale, with banking alone managing financial assets of almost US$140 trillion and institutional investors, notably pension funds, managing over US$100 trillion, and capital markets, including bond and equities, exceeding US$100 trillion and US$73 trillion respectively.”</p><p align="justify"> </p><p align="justify">Public-private partnerships</p><p align="justify">The AAAA promoted PPPs and blended finance arrangements, while the Global Infrastructure Forum was set up at Addis to close the ‘infrastructure gap’ in developing countries, estimated by the outcome document at between “$1 trillion to $1.5 trillion” annually.</p><p align="justify">Thus far, PPPs have been more significant in developed and upper middle-income countries, as low-income countries are rarely able to attract large private investors. Warnings that PPPs and other such modalities, already problematic in OECD member countries, are even less likely to succeed in developing countries, where cost recovery is more difficult, have been largely ignored.</p><p align="justify">Instead, PPPs have often worsened national budgetary positions in the long-run due to the contingent liabilities governments are required to take on. Consequently, in most cases, governments bear the most risk, subsidize ventures and guarantee revenues to the private partner.</p><p align="justify">While PPPs have clearly contributed to national financial difficulties, such problems were largely ignored until recently. With changing international relations, they are now being highlighted as leading to national ‘debt bondage’ to China and other non-traditional sources of finance.</p><p align="justify">Meanwhile, the US and other developed countries have announced major new infrastructure financing initiatives of their own, to draw developing countries from financial reliance on China. This unexpected political rivalry will have mixed consequences for borrowing developing countries.</p><p align="justify">PPPs involve many unpredictable risks, primarily borne by governments, as well as side and spill-over effects, with the private partners typically setting most terms. Moreover, PPPs in social sectors, such as health and water, are less inclusive, disadvantaging the poor and the less accessible.</p><p align="justify">Meanwhile concerns have been raised, even by The Economist, about enthusiasm for blended finance as ‘aid’, which typically favours private partners from the donor country. Such aid diversion — from budgetary support, social programmes and essential services — prioritizes private profits, rather than the public interest.</p><p align="justify"> </p><p align="justify">Checks and balances?</p><p align="justify">The UN Global Compact’s 10 principles from the turn of the century remain the main intergovernmental framework governing non-state partnerships, but remains ill-equipped for meaningful accountability, especially as it pre-dates the SDGs, and hence, are inadequate now.</p><p align="justify">Promoted and often required by OECD governments, PPPs and blended finance have not received enough critical scrutiny in terms of compatibility with UN mandates, while their extra-budgetary funding status has exempted them from rigorous audit, review and impact assessment.</p><p align="justify">With financing gap concerns accepted as the rationale for multi-stakeholder partnerships, the private sector is increasingly calling the shots, with occasional lip service to civil society engagement merely providing legitimacy, rather than adequate checks and balances.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Palabras clave:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/categoria/palabras-clave/objetivos-desarrollo-del-milenio-odm">Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio (ODM)</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/categoria/palabras-clave/naciones-unidas">Naciones Unidas</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/categoria/palabras-clave/desarrollo-sustentable">Desarrollo sustentable</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categoria field-type-list-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tema de investigación:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Desarrollo y medio ambiente</div></div></div>Tue, 11 Dec 2018 20:33:16 +0000anegrete2394 at http://obela.orgHavana Charter’s Progressive Trade Vision Subvertedhttp://obela.org/nota/havana-charters-progressive-trade-vision-subverted
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Autor:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/autores/jomo-kwame-sundaram">Jomo Kwame Sundaram</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/autores/anis-chowdhury">Anis Chowdhury</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-fuente2 field-type-link-field field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Fuente:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/havana-charters-progressive-trade-vision-subverted/" target="_blank">http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/12/havana-charters-progressive-trade-vision-subverte...</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Cuerpo:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>KUALA LUMPUR &amp; SYDNEY, Dec 4 2018 (IPS) - In criticizing the ‘free trade delusion’, UNCTAD’s 2018 Trade and Development Report proposes an alternative to both reactionary nationalism, recently revived by President Trump, and the corporate cosmopolitanism of neoliberal multilateral discourse in recent decades by revisiting the Havana Charter on its 70th anniversary.</p><p>From ITO to WTO</p><p>Instead, it urges reconsideration of lessons from the struggle from 1947 for the Havana Charter. Although often depicted as the forerunner of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Charter was far more ambitious.</p><p>Initially agreed to 70 years ago by over 50 countries — mainly from Latin America, as much of the rest of the developing world remained under European colonial rule — it was rejected by the US Congress, with GATT emerging as a poor compromise.</p><p>As envisaged at Bretton Woods in 1944, over 50 countries began to create the International Trade Organization (ITO) from 1945 to 1947. In 1947, 56 countries started negotiating the ITO charter in Havana following the 1947 United Nations Conference on Trade and Employment in Havana, eventually signed in 1948.</p><p>The idea of a multilateral trade organization to regulate trade — covering areas such as tariff reduction, business cartels, commodity agreements, economic development and foreign direct investment — was first mooted in the US Congress in 1916 by Representative Cordell Hull, later Roosevelt’s first Secretary of State in 1933.</p><p>However, the US Congress eventually rejected the Havana Charter, including establishment of the ITO, in 1948 following pressure from corporate lobbies unhappy about concessions to ‘underdeveloped’ countries. Thus, the Bretton Woods’ and Havana Charter’s promise of full employment and domestic industrialization in the post-war international trade order was aborted.</p><p>In their place, from 1948 to 1994, the GATT, a provisional compromise, became the main multilateral framework governing international trade, especially in manufactures, the basis for trade rules and regulations for most of the second half of the 20th century.</p><p>The Uruguay Round from 1986 to 1994, begun at Punta del Este, was the last round of multilateral trade negotiations under GATT. It ended the postwar trading order governed by GATT, replacing it with the new World Trade Organization (WTO) from 1995.</p><p>Developmental fair trade?</p><p>The UNCTAD report urges revisiting the Havana Charter in light of new challenges in recent decades such as the digital economy, environmental stress and financial vulnerabilities. So, what lessons can we draw from the Havana Charter in trying to reform the multilateral trading order?</p><p>In light of economic transformations over the last seven decades, it is crucial to consider how the Havana Charter tried to create a more developmental and equitable trading system, in contrast with actual changes in the world economy since.</p><p>After all, the Charter recognized that a healthy trading system must be based on economies seeking to ensure full employment while distributional issues have to be addressed at both national and international levels.</p><p>Profitable, but damaging business practices — by large international, multinational or transnational firms, abusing the international trading system — also need to be addressed.</p><p>The Charter recognized the crucial need for industrialization in developing countries as an essential part of a healthy trading system and multilateral world order, and sought to ensure that international trade rules would enable industrial policy.</p><p>The GATT compromise exceptionally allowed some such features in post-war trade rules, but even these were largely eliminated by the neoliberal Uruguay Round, as concerns about unemployment, decent work and deindustrialization were ignored.</p><p>Paths not taken</p><p>The evolution of the international trading system has been largely forgotten. Recent and current tensions in global trade are largely seen as threatening to the post-Second World War (WW2) international economic order first negotiated in the late 1940s and revised ever since.</p><p>But the international order of the post-WW2 period ended in the 1970s, as policymakers in the major developed economies embraced the counter-revolutionary neoliberal reforms of Thatcherism and Reaganism against Keynesian and development economics after Nixon unilaterally destroyed the Bretton Woods monetary arrangements.</p><p>Besides international trade liberalization as an end in itself, financial liberalization and globalization were facilitated as financial markets were deregulated, not only within national economies, but also across international borders.</p><p>Industrial policy, public enterprise and mixed economies were purged by the new neoliberal fundamentalists as the very idea of public intervention for healthy, equitable and balanced development was discredited by the counter-revolution against economic progress for all.</p><p>With multilateralism and the Doha Development Round under assault, retrieving relevant lessons from the Havana Charter after seven decades can be crucial in steering the world between the devil of reactionary nationalist ‘sovereigntism’ and the deep blue sea of neoliberal corporate cosmopolitanism or ‘globalism’.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Palabras clave:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/categoria/palabras-clave/omc">OMC</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/palabras-clave/carta-de-la-habana">Carta de la Habana</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2711">Multilateralismo</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/categoria/palabras-clave/libre-comercio">Libre Comercio</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categoria field-type-list-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tema de investigación:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Integración y comercio</div></div></div>Wed, 05 Dec 2018 17:43:38 +0000anegrete2389 at http://obela.orgLessons for the ‘Rest' from ersatz miracleshttp://obela.org/nota/lessons-for-the-rest-from-ersatz-miracles
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Autor:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/autores/jomo-kwame-sundaram">Jomo Kwame Sundaram</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-fuente2 field-type-link-field field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Fuente:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/lessons-rest-ersatz-miracles/" target="_blank">http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/11/lessons-rest-ersatz-miracles/</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Cuerpo:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Of the ten fastest growing economies since 1960, eight are in East Asia. Two main competing explanations claimed to explain this regional concentration of catch up growth since the late 20th century, often referred to as the East Asian miracle.</p><p>The dominant ‘neo-liberal' Washington Consensus, sought to establish minimalist ‘night-watchman' state, attributed this exceptional regional performance to macroeconomic stability, public goods provision, and openness to trade and investment.</p><p>Meanwhile, more heterodox economists focused on the need for states to adopt pragmatic, experimental ‘trial and error', selective approaches to overcome market and coordination failures in order to accelerate growth, especially through industrialization.</p><p>In this view, the developmental states of Northeast Asia used their ‘embedded autonomy' viz a viz the private sector to accelerate technological catch-up and achieve rapid growth. But what then is to be learnt from the more modest and mixed progress in Southeast Asia?</p><p>Southeast Asia and the ‘Rest'</p><p>The conventional wisdom about Southeast Asia, particularly Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand (MIT), is that states there lacked the strength, autonomy and embeddedness viz a viz the private sector to successfully adopt Northeast Asian development strategies.</p><p>Selective interventions in MIT were said to be subject to too much rent-seeking and corruption, which were widely believed to have slowed growth elsewhere. But this view does not quite fit the facts, i.e., sustained rapid growth in MIT.</p><p>Michael Rock's Dictators, Democrats and Development in Southeast Asia shows how weaker and less autonomous states in MIT, subject to corruption and rent-seeking, successfully achieved rapid growth by pursuing unorthodox interventionist policies.</p><p>MIT undoubtedly looks much more like the Rest than Northeast Asia. They are resource rich, but have avoided the ‘resource curse'. They have high levels of ethnic heterogeneity, but have avoided related growth tragedies.</p><p>Like the Rest, they have poorer governance—weaker and less competent states, with less autonomy from the private sector, more corruption and rent-seeking. Yet, they have avoided the growth slowdowns and lost decades experienced by many of the Rest.</p><p>Nation building first?</p><p>So, how did MIT succeed while the Rest did not? Economic take-offs in MIT were preceded by rentier capitalist political elites gaining state control and pragmatically implementing industrial development strategies.</p><p>The successes were certainly not primarily about free trade, laissez faire, or being FDI friendly and export-oriented. They were also not easy, took time, and encountered political resistance, instability and violence.</p><p>Development did not emerge on the political agenda until elites needed to protect their conservative ‘nation-building' projects. To consolidate power, they recognized that development and growth were in their long-term political interest.</p><p>The inability of political elites to successfully complete their nation-building projects is therefore crucial to understanding ‘failed states'. Such conservative nation-building projects were typically led by ‘centre right' coalitions composed of monarchies, the military, police, bureaucracy and business elite.</p><p>The losers were the Left and popular groups, among others. With the defeat of the Left and histories of openness to foreign trade and investment, elites forged pro-growth political coalitions enabling an open capitalist, but nonetheless interventionist growth strategy to work.</p><p>Pragmatic development</p><p>This development strategy was more pragmatic than ideological, and rooted in essentially ‘experimental', ‘muddling through' and ‘trial and error' approaches. Thus, even though these were ‘open economies', the governments were not dogmatic ‘free traders'.</p><p>As MIT governments used both markets and states to sustain growth, development policies were certainly not laissez faire, even though they were capitalist, with states far more interventionist than mere night-watchmen.</p><p>MIT states sought to promote domestic capitalists to compete in the global economy. Such promotion of rentier business elites was reciprocated with ‘kickbacks' for political elites to secure political support.</p><p>The fact that MIT growth was primarily driven by domestic, not foreign investment, has important implications for development policy. MIT's favoured capitalists generally responded by substantially increasing the investment to GDP ratio.</p><p>MIT growth was thus investment, rather than export-led. The shares of manufactures in GDP and exports are larger than expected while export concentration indices are less than believed, suggesting that selective industrial policies worked, albeit unevenly.</p><p>Policy context</p><p>This strategy has influenced the size distribution of firms as a small number of very large conglomerates dominate—government-patronized ethnic Chinese conglomerates which dominate the MIT economies and, exceptionally, Malaysia's ‘government-linked companies'.</p><p>This political economy ‘ecosystem' could have failed if MIT governments were not developmentalist, or if the elites were too greedy, or if the private sector did not invest, or if there were no checks or balances.</p><p>Ruling political elites in MIT have been opportunistically or pragmatically nationalistic despite quasi-neoliberal rhetoric to the contrary. They pursued economic development as necessary for regime consolidation, national power and achieving their goals.</p><p>Catching-up?</p><p>Many observers correctly argue that MIT economies have not been consistently good at catching-up, which is only to be expected from experimenting. Nevertheless, their industrial policies have been effective in upgrading some firms and industries.</p><p>There is evidence of learning in aircraft, wood processing and automotive industries in Indonesia, and of substantial learning in palm oil processing and electronics in Malaysia, and agro-processing, cement, automotive parts, and component supplies in Thailand.</p><p>MIT governments and capitalists also learned from setbacks and failures without necessarily admitting to them, e.g., when governments took too much, or when government incentives failed, and policies had adverse consequences, even if unintended.</p><p>Sustaining growth, industrialization and technological progress remain preconditions for continuing income increases. Yet, all three now seem caught in so-called ‘middle income traps'. Escaping these traps will depend on the governing elites' understanding of past progress.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Palabras clave:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/palabras-clave/east-asia">East Asia</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/palabras-clave/mit">MIT</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/palabras-clave/strategies">strategies.</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categoria field-type-list-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tema de investigación:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Integración y comercio</div></div></div>Tue, 06 Nov 2018 20:00:01 +0000lvargas2373 at http://obela.orgDeveloping Countries Losing Out To Digital Giantshttp://obela.org/nota/developing-countries-losing-out-to-digital-giants
<div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-3 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Autor:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/autores/jomo-kwame-sundaram">Jomo Kwame Sundaram</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/autores/anis-chowdhury">Anis Chowdhury</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-fuente2 field-type-link-field field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Fuente:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/developing-countries-losing-digital-giants/" target="_blank">http://www.ipsnews.net/2018/10/developing-countries-losing-digital-giants/</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Cuerpo:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>KUALA LUMPUR and SYDNEY, Oct 17 2018 (IPS) - A new United Nations report warns that the potential benefits to developing countries of digital technologies are likely to be lost to a small number of successful first movers who have established digital monopolies.</p><p>According to the Trade and Development Report 2018 (TDR 2018), subtitled ‘Power, Platforms and the Free Trade Delusion’, while developing countries need to invest more in digital infrastructure, they must also address the ownership and control of data and their use.</p><p>Developing countries will need to protect, and extend, available policy space to successfully integrate into the global digital economy. Stronger competition and regulatory frameworks will also require multilateral cooperation.</p><p>Digital concentration</p><p>Libertarian ‘light-touch’ regulatory frameworks have allowed powerful corporations to largely evade strict regulatory supervision and oversight, expand exclusively into lucrative related areas and limit policymakers’ influence. Digital monopolies have thus profitably ‘mined’ and processed data.</p><p>Of the top 25 big technology firms in terms of market capitalization, 14 are US based, with three in the European Union, three in China, four in other Asian countries and one in Africa.</p><p>In 2015, the top three big US technology firms had average market capitalization of more than $400 billion, compared to $200 billion in China, $123 billion in other Asian countries, $69 billion in Europe and $66 billion in Africa.</p><p>Apple recently became the first company in the world to be valued at more than $1 trillion, matching the combined economic output of Saudi Arabia and South Africa.</p><p>Such concentration and market dominance have ensured lucrative rents for the big players in the sector. For example, Amazon’s profits-to-sales ratio increased from 10 per cent in 2005 to 23 per cent in 2015, while Alibaba’s increased from 10 per cent in 2011 to 32 per cent in 2015!</p><p>These trends are largely due to the extraction, processing and sale of data. Digital platforms use their control over data to organize and mediate transactions along value chains. Network effects allow these platforms to expand these ecosystems utilizing feedback-driven processes.</p><p>The resulting market power, with stronger ‘property rights’ on the control and use of data, has enabled rentier and other uncompetitive practices. Thus, one cannot but be circumspect about the hype over ‘big data’ and ‘data revolution’. They rarely promote inclusive development, especially when left to ‘market’ or ‘self-regulation’.</p><p>Digital democracy?<br />TDR 2018 recommends active policies to check anti-competitive rent capture by digital platforms, and misuse of data. Antitrust and competition policies, historically concerned with market structure and behaviour, increasingly emphasize maximizing consumer welfare, using price-based measures.</p><p>In our increasingly digitized world, consumers receive services in exchange for surrendering their data, at zero nominal prices, i.e., for free. The control and use of such data enables the lucrative rentier activities associated with their use and abuse.</p><p>Policy options include stricter regulation of restrictive business practices and breaking up large firms responsible for market concentration. The digital world’s monopolistic tendencies should be regulated, and firms’ abilities to exploit their dominance restricted, e.g., the recent measures taken by the European Union against Google.</p><p>Developmental digitization?Digital platforms use their control over data to organize and mediate transactions along value chains. Network effects allow these platforms to expand these ecosystems utilizing feedback-driven processes.<br />For developing countries, the regulatory challenges to realize developmental gains from digitization are greater. Some countries are already using localization measures to develop domestic digital capacities and digital infrastructure.</p><p>But in most cases, data are owned by those who gather and store them, mainly digital super platforms, which then have full, exclusive and unlimited rights over the resource.</p><p>National data policies should be designed to address four major issues: who can own data, how data can be collected, who can use such data, and on what terms. They should also address the question of data sovereignty, e.g., which data can leave the country, and consequently are not governed by domestic law. South-South and regional cooperation can help small developing countries build their digital skills, capacities and capabilities.</p><p>Developing countries need to protect and expand available policy space to implement development strategies that should include digital policies with regard to data localization, data flow management, technology transfers and custom duties on electronic transmissions.</p><p>The international community is just beginning to discuss rules and regulations to improve them, before agreement is reached at the World Trade Organization and other multilateral bodies.</p><p>A premature commitment to rules with long-term impacts on fast-changing matters should be avoided, especially where powerful business interests remain influential and often dictate the very terms for discourse.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-2 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Palabras clave:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/categoria/palabras-clave/tecnolog-informaci-n">tecnologías de la información</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/palabras-clave/digitalizaci%C3%B3n">digitalización</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/palabras-clave/informe-de-comercio-y-desarrollo">Informe de Comercio y Desarrollo</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-categoria field-type-list-text field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tema de investigación:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even">Desarrollo y medio ambiente</div></div></div>Wed, 17 Oct 2018 15:32:48 +0000anegrete2357 at http://obela.org